The Sufferer and the Witness
by GenrexLP
Summary: Covering the story of Betty and Simon, from when he started as Simon, to when he ended as Simon, and how Betty felt at every stage in the progression, from the depths of madness to the light of love and memory.


" _Do you spend your days counting the hours you're awake_

 _And when night covers the sky you find yourself doing the same_

 _There's a burden you couldn't bury in spite of all your prayers_

 _As a light goes off inside your heart and you remember what it's like to care…."_

" _Injection" – Rise Against_

She woke up to piercing sounds of a high frequency resonating in her skull. She tried to block it out and scrunched her eyes tighter as the shrill screams ebbed and flowed, getting louder and softer unexpectedly, but never ceasing. Her attempt failing, she opened her eyes and scanned the darkness around, trying to make shapes amidst the black spots that focused in front of her as the resonance in her head decreased gradually. She slowly got up and stared at her hands, concentrating hard.

"Who am I?" she asked herself in a whisper.

She kept on staring at her hands, trying to grasp an answer from the lines in her palms. As much as she stared at those thin unmoving wisps upon her outstretched palms, nothing seemed to set off a spark in her brain. She kept staring, time being non-existent in the moment. She felt the walls cage in on her, the ring in her head suddenly increasingly as she felt herself become weightless, lifting up and crashing through everything at the speed of light. Pure claustrophobia and nausea rang through her as she convulsed, trying to break from bonds that were non-existent. And at a precise moment everything stood still, time froze and she felt as heavy as a planet, her density causing her to skyrocket back to where she was. To crash and disintegrate.

She let out a gasp of air and took a deep breath. She let it out. She took another deep breath while clutching the corners of her makeshift bed. She let it out. She took another deep breath, a bit shakily though. She held it in and let it out, each heave feeling as if a knife was scraping against her ribs. She took another deep breath as a tear traced down her cheek and onto her palm. The next breath she let out was mixed with a hurricane of emotions all cascading out with her tears and anguish.

She lay as she was, sitting up on bed, letting the tears hit her outstretched hands, her fingers slowly contracting back into a fist. She felt like her head was going to explode from the pressure. She felt like her body would collapse with the feverish warmth that shrouded her eyes. She felt like her hands were going to melt from the heat of her tears. She felt as if the pain was never going to end. She felt as if it was never ending. As it was never going to end.

After a few minutes of mind numbing agony, she steadied herself and got up on shaky knees to feel her way in the darkness towards the derelict bathroom in her shelter. Finding the sink, she turned on the tap and let the water run through her hands, watching but not seeing the streams that spilt from in between her fingers. Splashing her face with water in an attempt to cool herself down, she looked up and saw her reflection through the cracked mirror above the sink. She gazed at her frail and haggard form, and laid her head on the shattered mirror as the tears fell again and mixed with the water dripping from the tap.

She looked up at her tear strewn face and stared into the shattered pieces of the mirror. She remembered punching it some time back. She remembered the pain of the glass shards embedded in her hands. She remembered the pain as the blood dropped on the floor. She remembered.

"I'm Betty…" she whispered at her broken reflection before succumbing to the tears again.

Smoke filled the room as the crash of glass broke the trance like state in which she was in. She stirred a bit. She didn't feel quite like herself. Then it all broke loose.

" _What the? Oh look the bread's alive. Betty you see?"_

She lost her own voice as her thoughts were unplugged and washed down the drain. A new voice found its way into her throat.

" _I see a crab emerging from a dark pool."_ She answered, unaware of the fact that it was indeed herself that was speaking.

" _Oh yeah? Well what does the crab say?"_

She saw the pincers of a deadly crab emerging from the depths of a dark pool. The water wasn't black in color, but such a shade of blue that gave you the impression that no light can ever pierce the veil behind that tide. She watched dumbstruck as the crab emerged, but instead of the eyes of a crustacean, she saw the face she so longed to see.

But there was a difference. Simon's eyes were not twinkling, they were the same murky color of the water. Fixing his lifeless eyes on her own scared ones, he spoke to her. He spoke something that was so utterly horrifying that she did not hear a single word. She had lost her hearing. She had lost all feeling and all rationality. She was truly numb.

She read his lips moving and understood the terrible fact that he had just stated. And it broke her. It ripped apart her sanity, clawing at her understanding and destroying her mind.

She laughed an uncontrollable, high pitched laugh that was laced with madness. Within it also resided a deep sense of sadness. She disappeared into the void without further ado.

Let me take you to the fundamentals of a fission reaction. Imagine a single atom of a heavy and unstable metal at the edge of a line. A neutral particle, insignificantly small compared to the mass of the other, is fired with a high velocity towards the unstable atom. As insignificant as it as, the single neutral particle breaks apart the heavy atom and causes it to disintegrate, releasing a rather significant amount of energy to the environment. And it doesn't stop there. When the heavy atom breaks apart, it releases neutral particles, which in turn disintegrates the next heavy atom and thus the chain continues.

Pretty random isn't it?

No. It isn't. It is in no way random.

You think it is. You think this was by chance. But it isn't. Want to know how it all starts? Well read it again. Just realize this, the imbalance is not within the positive and the negative. It's within what we say is neutral.

" _The trail of crumbs you left somehow got lost along the way_

 _If you never meant to leave, then you only had to stay_

 _But the memories that haunt us, are cherished just the same_

 _As the ones that bring us closer to the sky – no matter how grey…."_

" _Injection" – Rise Against_

She felt the last traces of her tears drying up from her cheeks. She dared not to lift her head up from where she was huddled in the corner of the bathroom in case the concussive headaches reemerged. She was breathing in deep, her heart rate returning to normal with each rise and fall. She felt like all the tears had been forcibly wrenched from her eyes, creating a void where she was certain that she will never be able to cry again. But that was exactly what she felt last night. She felt that last morning. She felt that the morning before that. She felt it constantly, days on end.

She knew no matter how she felt, she would always break down again. She peered from between her hair at the ceiling, the drab painting peeling off and the mold growing endlessly. It was like a virus. A cancer that had no root nor cause. Just endlessly spreading.

She closed her eyes again, trying to search for what she secretly knew was not there.

" _Princess, we'll be late. The train leaves in an hour and wheew you know what traffic is like."_

" _Just a minute Simon!" she yelled from her room. She and her fiancé had planned this trip for a long time. They were both archeologists, and were constantly on the move from conferences to sites to museums and to libraries. It was a tiring schedule, but nothing would have made her give it up. For she had the one thing in the world that she could never get from any other place or occupation._

 _She slung her backpack on and hastily climbed downstairs to her eagerly waiting Simon. They shared a tender embrace at the doorway. And with that Betty Grof and Professor Simon Petrikov stepped out into the cold chilly breeze, hand in hand, sharing the warmth with each other in the smallest, yet sweetest ways._

Betty felt her heart lurch at that memory. She wanted to cut her heart out and stab it repeatedly. So deep was the pain and frustration. There is a point where sadness meets madness and a gaping chasm of isolation is formed in the middle.

Betty found herself stranded in that pit of despair.

There he was without a single memory of who she was. Of what she meant to him. Of who he was. And here she is with an overflow of that memory, but without the natural selection to grasp it. Here she was tormented by the flow of magical madness.

But she didn't get angry. She would never.

Because she knew that this was what Simon was feeling too. And he suffered for a far longer time than her.

Betty stood up and washed her face, trying to look as orderly as possible in this house of disorder and chaos. She had to save him, at whatever cost it takes.

Eyes wandering aimlessly around the horizon, lingering here and there on the occasional cloud in the distant sky, he sat there. Doing nothing.

There was pretty much nothing to do. No point. No aim. No use.

He'd grown fat and lazy over the years. He was tired of roaming around, but as he thought, there was nothing else to do. His memory had become muddled throughout the years, but then again, there was nothing he could do about it. Deep inside his castle he once found a hidden cave with belongings, clothes and racks upon racks of books. He didn't go in there. He didn't want to.

He just kept on staring at the horizon, an old man, alone with nothing to do.

She looked at the window. She looked at the sunlight flitting in through the broken panes and spreading across the floor. It was almost calming. Almost. She stood beside the window and gazed at the horizon. She would not for a second have thought that she was staring into the same horizon that her Simon was staring at as well.

" _This grip loosens but it never breaks_

 _We carry nothing but a name you will forsake_

 _Your words were always there to break my fall_

 _In them I find the comfort to see through it all…."_

" _Injection" – Rise Against_


End file.
